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IMO, American society would benefit from teaching Roberts Rules in high school. Understanding how to have groups come to decisions without forcing consensus a c

IMO, American society would benefit from teaching Roberts Rules in high school. Understanding how to have groups come to decisions without forcing consensus a crucial underpinning of society. Side benefit is understanding that when you attack these things, order breaks down. On a small scale, I’ve found using some of these techniques effective for getting engineering groups to consensus and getting parties who disagree with the decision to have felt heard and ok with the direction agreed upon.

ghaff 4y ago
I don't wholly disagree but there are probably far simpler documents one could put together (and I imagine exist) with various voting/notification/debate arrangements most suitable for the given situation. Whenever I've been involved with creating bylaws for an organization, we've tried to be fairly specific about such things. (One thing I definitely learned was that being very informal about most things was fine--until it wasn't.) In the bylaws, we basically invoked Robert's Rules in the vein of--if we didn't think of some situation, use this.
- cf 4y ago
  I know there is IWW's "Rusty's rules of order" that tries to simplify these procedures and remove some of the archaic bits. https://libcom.org/article/how-hold-good-meeting-rustys-rules-order https://libcom.org/article/how-hold-good-meeting-rustys-rule...
- pfarrell 4y ago
  Agree. I’ll admit that, like Agile, I use portions of it as I see fit, not a strict adherence. The core thing I’m thinking of is respect for opposing viewpoints, techniques for debating with people who disagree, and coming to decisions. Debate teams do this, but I think there’s some value in everyone getting a taste of it.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    There's probably at least two different aspects. One is how to discuss/debate opposing viewpoints so people at least feel they've had the opportunity to express their opinion and then there's how a decision is actually made. The specifics of which are very important on a board or other structure that is some variant of majority rule.
citizenkeen 4y ago
As a high school student I was in an organization called Future Business Leaders of America, where I competed as a parliamentarian at state and national events. I use that bit of my high school education more than most of my actual classes.
- _9xrb 4y ago
  Model United Nations also uses Robert’s Rules, and provided me with a similar parallel education.
- addled 4y ago
  Yeah, I think there's opportunity to learn about it in most high schools, usually through extra/co-curricular activities like that. Like someone else mentioned in another comment, I experienced Robert's Rules during speech and debate class when we did model UN. However, I also got a second dose in a place that might surprise some, Ag classes. Future Farmers if America also uses Roberts Rules for their meetings and competitions.
- jcims 4y ago
  Future Farmers of America had something similar.
DigiDigiorno 4y ago
There are too many subjects ahead of Robert's Rules for me to agree with that statement. Plus there are extra curriculars that do teach it. I mean, it should be taught that parliamentary procedure is literally a thing used by assemblies, but the intricacies of specific rules, outside of use as a broad example, is beyond that scope.
- dragontamer 4y ago
  The simplified Roberts rules are pretty simple though. 1. Assume that one person gets to talk at a time. Give them a reasonable time limit to communicate. 2. Different sides take turns in a discussion. 3. Rules for the discussion are under debate, but changing the discussion rules is much more complicated for good reason. Try not to do this unnecessarily, but there are rules for that. There is an arbitrary level of "meta" here, where discussions-about-discussions-about-discussions can arise, and the rules are designed to work under these complex scenarios. But its rare to actually ever need them. 4. Ensure that a quorum has been reached before starting a meeting. If your group is composed of 10 people try to have at least 6 people show up, otherwise its a failed meeting and nothing can possibly get done. 5. After every meeting, send out meeting notes in an email. At the start of every meeting, discuss the previous meetings notes and vote to finalize those notes. Only the written record counts, not people's memories. 6. If an issue is settled / voted upon, do not revisit it until the next meeting (or later). --------- Its not Roberts rules themselves that are important. Its: 1. The paradigm of having meta-rules, for how to discuss about the discussion. Any conflict will naturally become meta over time, and knowing how to resolve disputes despite a meta-nature is important. (Or at least, knowing that someone 100+ years ago thought of the problem, and there's a set of 100+ year old traditional rules that seem to avoid that problem). 2. Giving everyone a fair turn during the discussion: meeting quorum, alternating discussion points, time limits. 3. Giving forward progress: settling debates, finalizing discussions, etc. etc. Every aspect of Roberts rules can be voted upon and changed by a group. IE: its the rules of the group that matter, not the rules as written by Robert 100+ years ago.
indymike 4y ago
> Understanding how to have groups come to decisions without forcing consensus This is a lost art, and so is being able to accept these decisions with out becoming the resistance.
- Ensorceled 4y ago
  The number of leaders I've encountered who demand consensus and 100% agreement with all facets of a decision is mind boggling. Eventually they browbeat dissent into discontent when they could have had an entire team of "I've been heard and now I support the group"
patcon 4y ago
> IMO, American society would benefit from teaching Roberts Rules in high school. Understanding how to have groups come to decisions without forcing consensus a crucial underpinning of society. Agree on the value of teaching Roberts rules. While contributing to a consensus-building technology (https://pol.is https://pol.is), I ended up on a call with a historian of Roberts Rules. He made the really memorable observation that Roberts Rules is essentially a social technology for deliberation at scale, which has the important property of preserving and protecting minority voice in consensus processes. It's notable that we now make a lot of things we call "social tech" whose algorithms do no such thing
pyuser583 4y ago
Roberts Rules has a “bad” side: it’s a family fiefdom run by the Roberts Family. They have been good caretakers of the tradition. But many good government types take issue with the fact a private family controls the by-laws of so many organizations. I got to listen to a city attorney go on and on for an hour about how inappropriate it is that city meetings are legally bound to follow the dictats of a family who doesn’t know the city exists. But then again, there’s no actual scandal so far.

ghaff 4y ago

I don't wholly disagree but there are probably far simpler documents one could put together (and I imagine exist) with various voting/notification/debate arrangements most suitable for the given situation. Whenever I've been involved with creating bylaws for an organization, we've tried to be fairly specific about such things. (One thing I definitely learned was that being very informal about most things was fine--until it wasn't.) In the bylaws, we basically invoked Robert's Rules in the vein of--if we didn't think of some situation, use this.

cf 4y ago
I know there is IWW's "Rusty's rules of order" that tries to simplify these procedures and remove some of the archaic bits. https://libcom.org/article/how-hold-good-meeting-rustys-rules-order https://libcom.org/article/how-hold-good-meeting-rustys-rule...
pfarrell 4y ago
Agree. I’ll admit that, like Agile, I use portions of it as I see fit, not a strict adherence. The core thing I’m thinking of is respect for opposing viewpoints, techniques for debating with people who disagree, and coming to decisions. Debate teams do this, but I think there’s some value in everyone getting a taste of it.
- ghaff 4y ago
  There's probably at least two different aspects. One is how to discuss/debate opposing viewpoints so people at least feel they've had the opportunity to express their opinion and then there's how a decision is actually made. The specifics of which are very important on a board or other structure that is some variant of majority rule.

citizenkeen 4y ago

As a high school student I was in an organization called Future Business Leaders of America, where I competed as a parliamentarian at state and national events. I use that bit of my high school education more than most of my actual classes.

_9xrb 4y ago
Model United Nations also uses Robert’s Rules, and provided me with a similar parallel education.
addled 4y ago
Yeah, I think there's opportunity to learn about it in most high schools, usually through extra/co-curricular activities like that. Like someone else mentioned in another comment, I experienced Robert's Rules during speech and debate class when we did model UN. However, I also got a second dose in a place that might surprise some, Ag classes. Future Farmers if America also uses Roberts Rules for their meetings and competitions.
jcims 4y ago
Future Farmers of America had something similar.

DigiDigiorno 4y ago

There are too many subjects ahead of Robert's Rules for me to agree with that statement. Plus there are extra curriculars that do teach it. I mean, it should be taught that parliamentary procedure is literally a thing used by assemblies, but the intricacies of specific rules, outside of use as a broad example, is beyond that scope.

dragontamer 4y ago
The simplified Roberts rules are pretty simple though. 1. Assume that one person gets to talk at a time. Give them a reasonable time limit to communicate. 2. Different sides take turns in a discussion. 3. Rules for the discussion are under debate, but changing the discussion rules is much more complicated for good reason. Try not to do this unnecessarily, but there are rules for that. There is an arbitrary level of "meta" here, where discussions-about-discussions-about-discussions can arise, and the rules are designed to work under these complex scenarios. But its rare to actually ever need them. 4. Ensure that a quorum has been reached before starting a meeting. If your group is composed of 10 people try to have at least 6 people show up, otherwise its a failed meeting and nothing can possibly get done. 5. After every meeting, send out meeting notes in an email. At the start of every meeting, discuss the previous meetings notes and vote to finalize those notes. Only the written record counts, not people's memories. 6. If an issue is settled / voted upon, do not revisit it until the next meeting (or later). --------- Its not Roberts rules themselves that are important. Its: 1. The paradigm of having meta-rules, for how to discuss about the discussion. Any conflict will naturally become meta over time, and knowing how to resolve disputes despite a meta-nature is important. (Or at least, knowing that someone 100+ years ago thought of the problem, and there's a set of 100+ year old traditional rules that seem to avoid that problem). 2. Giving everyone a fair turn during the discussion: meeting quorum, alternating discussion points, time limits. 3. Giving forward progress: settling debates, finalizing discussions, etc. etc. Every aspect of Roberts rules can be voted upon and changed by a group. IE: its the rules of the group that matter, not the rules as written by Robert 100+ years ago.

indymike 4y ago

> Understanding how to have groups come to decisions without forcing consensus This is a lost art, and so is being able to accept these decisions with out becoming the resistance.

Ensorceled 4y ago
The number of leaders I've encountered who demand consensus and 100% agreement with all facets of a decision is mind boggling. Eventually they browbeat dissent into discontent when they could have had an entire team of "I've been heard and now I support the group"

patcon 4y ago

> IMO, American society would benefit from teaching Roberts Rules in high school. Understanding how to have groups come to decisions without forcing consensus a crucial underpinning of society. Agree on the value of teaching Roberts rules. While contributing to a consensus-building technology (https://pol.is https://pol.is), I ended up on a call with a historian of Roberts Rules. He made the really memorable observation that Roberts Rules is essentially a social technology for deliberation at scale, which has the important property of preserving and protecting minority voice in consensus processes. It's notable that we now make a lot of things we call "social tech" whose algorithms do no such thing

pyuser583 4y ago

Roberts Rules has a “bad” side: it’s a family fiefdom run by the Roberts Family. They have been good caretakers of the tradition. But many good government types take issue with the fact a private family controls the by-laws of so many organizations. I got to listen to a city attorney go on and on for an hour about how inappropriate it is that city meetings are legally bound to follow the dictats of a family who doesn’t know the city exists. But then again, there’s no actual scandal so far.